Survey To Seek God's Vision For Society

January 11, 1992|By SHERI VENEMA; Courant Staff Writer

With its goal no less than the transformation of society, the Capitol Region Conference of Churches will survey 5,000 churchgoers in the Hartford area this month for help in discerning God's will for the region.

The Rev. Roger W. Floyd, executive director of the conference of churches, said, "Our task is, how do we come closer to what God expects of us?" The group plans a regional forum in April to discuss survey results and its final "vision document," but its timetable is sort of like eternity -- it has no end.

"It's not a quick fix," Floyd said. Last summer, the conference created The Visioning Project, an interfaith effort to seek a divine plan for society. The names are similar, but The Visioning Project is not affiliated with Hartford Vision Project, a task force representing business, government, nonprofit institutions and others working to define and act on its own vision for Hartford.

For The Visioning Project, about 85 people from 55 congregations, representing Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Bahais, met in small workshops in the fall. From those meetings came the first draft of a statement of "faith principles" that church members around the region will discuss.

The draft, a 15-page document that ranges from personal belief to social policy, sets forth the vision of a people and a society transformed by faith.

"To transform society into a caring and sharing community necessitates our challenging the forces of darkness, destruction and death by strengthening the forces of love, justice and peace within all persons and within our institutions," the document states.

The document calls for regional education, a fair taxation system and the celebration of individual differences, including differences of sexual preference.

The document also recognizes the anxiety over economic troubles that has gripped the region. "A missing ingredient may well be HOPE. To introduce and reinforce a deep sense of hope is the contribution of the People of God," the document says.

Floyd said the Visioning Project is less a call to action than an evaluation of whether individuals and society are adhering to

the faith and principles they profess.

"When we discover a discrepancy, that's the point at which we have to go to work," he said.

The conference will create a service corps, asking churches and synagogues to examine the needs in their towns and work to fill them. But it will also challenge people to ask why such needs exist. "Why are people hungry when there's absolutely no economic reason why they should be?" Floyd asked.